Wednesday, 25 January 2012

Last night I watched Oranges and Sunshine. I had wanted to see this film at the cinema, when it was released last year, but none of the cinemas near me showed this film.

I cannot recommend this film highly enough. It is about the organised deportation of children in care from the UK to Commonwealth countries, such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada. It has extra materiel included on the DVD, a questions and answers session with people from the film and Margaret Humphries, the social worker who led the quest to reunite the deportees with their families in the UK, and the apology from Gordon Brown and Andy Burnham is also included. Before the apology, there is a statement which says that the deportations were not only going on in the 1950s and 1960s, but that they had been going on for centuries. As I read that shocking statement, I wished they could have added that the illegal deportations are still ongoing, as the secret family courts are still taking peoples children from this country and sending them abroad - there are accounts from the West Midlands to show that Social Services have spent public money in this way, on plane tickets to whisk children out of this country.

I don't want to knock Gordon Brown, because one thing I will say about him is that I wrote to him many times while he was the Prime Minister and I got a reply from every single letter I sent to him. I don't think it is fair to blame the horrible wicked child stealing and deportation that has come to light on people like him. I just wished Gordon Brown would have had a bit more courage, and a determination to stop these disgusting crimes against humanity while he had the chance.

Of course, the situation is different from this film now, as nowadays each individual child is worth more, the human traffickers see the stolen children as little pots of gold, as the child prostitution and forced adoption industry is worth £billions, whereas the 50 - 60s deportees were wanted as cheap labour to exploit, although some of them were also sexually abused as well.

It is a very good film and I am very glad to have managed to get a copy at last.

Thursday, 19 January 2012

When I was young I spent about a month learning the opening of this piece. I don't know how he manages to play it so fast!

I learned to play this when I was young, and impressed my friends at school, but probably encouraged the bullies to pick a fight with me, which ended my school days because I belted them back and ended up getting big stones thrown at me and Mum wouldn't let me go to that school any more and got me into college instead.

Being blocked from accessing Revolution Harry's blog has prompted me to put this post up.

I (and I strongly suspect Harry is too) am 100% opposed to revolution. I think it's important for me to make this statement so that there can be no misunderstanding about this issue.

I am a Christian, not an anarchist. Christians are people who try to follow the example set by the Lord Jesus Christ, who was also not an anarchist, though he was falsely accused of being one.

Anarchy is the desire to destroy the government and create a lawless society. I have no such desire. What I want is that the government rules in a just and proper way, so that everybody, without exception, is subject to the same laws. So that, for example, if a rich man murders someone, he is given the same means of a fair trial as a poor man.

The way I see it, the ones who are responsible for creating disrespect for the laws are lawyers. To deliberatly create over complicated laws, that ordinary people stand no chance of even remembering, let alone obeying, is to show contempt for the God who created us all. To create all these new laws and clauses, and not give the people in the country easy access to actually finding out what all these new laws and clauses are is dishonest.

People are getting angry, because they see God's laws being broken - the laws which prohibit murder, stealing, rape ect - and people using their influence, political muscle and money, and these new super complicated laws and clauses to get away with really serious crimes, whilst other people are getting hammered for really ridiculous non crimes such as dropping a sweet paper. And they also realise that something very strange is going on with the media, that they are not being given the news, that they are being certain news items and not others, that they are being prevented from accessing certain news items and information.

I hope and pray that this country will never have another revolution, but will instead have a spiritual awakening. People need to care about justice, we need to care about righteaousness. There are people in this country who want this country to fall apart at the seams, I say in this country but the driving forces are actually coming from a gang of people who don't really care about this country at all - they are international anarchists. They don't need to worry too much about causing everything to go belly up in this country because they have properties in other countries, and some of them also have yachts.

I wrote to every MP in the British Isles at least 10 times, informing them about two American paedophile psychologists, Richard Gardner and Ralph Underwager, who have influenced the child protection system in the UK, with syndromes that they have invented, the object which was to enable paedophiles to get away with their crimes, and to cover up child abuse. Child abuse has to be one of the most wicked crimes anyone can commit. I had quite a few replies from those MPs, but not a single one of them has ever stood up in Parliament and spoken about either of these two men to my knowledge. Gardner was sent to this country by Eagle Associates and the Kensington Institute, apparently now renamed the Commonwealth Institute. Anyone who invited Richard Gardner to this country must have known full well what a wicked scoundrel he was. Eagle Associates is a subsidery of Lockheed Martin, the US company that is responsible for making cluster bombs, and also running the UK 2011 Census. The chairman of Eagle Associates is a man called David Abrahams. I understand this is the same man who gave dodgy cash donations to New Labour whilst Tony Blair was Prime Minister, and then tried to deny it, by pretending to be skint! Now THAT looks like anarchy to me!

Monday, 16 January 2012

Like I said, I'm not publishing any more of your nasty hate filled comments. I have however spent about 5 minuites (that's all you are worth of my precious time) penning a little song specially for you.

SET TO THE BARRY MANILOW SONG MANDY

In my inbox, every dayWhat's the insult for today?Adding hate comments to all of my postsSending it via Google, the host

Wednesday, 4 January 2012

Priest jailed for seven years for abuse at orphanage Linus Gregoriadis Friday 01 May 1998

A CATHOLIC priest who abused children at an orphanage was jailed for seven years yesterday. Father Eric Taylor, who abused boys as young as six and then stood by as they were beaten by nuns for complaining, was found guilty of 16 charges of indecent assault and two charges of buggery.

During sentencing at Warwick Crown Court, Judge Marten Coates told 78- year-old Taylor: "For nearly seven years you were in a position of trust and authority at the home at Coleshill.

"These homes had been set up to rescue the most vulnerable people in our society.

"You told the jury the regime was harsh and boys were beaten in an unlawful manner. Not only did you do nothing about this, but you knew the fear of receiving such punishment meant that the boys were unlikely to complain.

"Those few who did knew their complaints would not be believed and secure in that knowledge you indulged yourself.

"The lifelong damage you inflicted has been seen during the course of this trial. The trust placed in you, you abused on a daily basis."

During the two-week trial the jury heard of a catalogue of offences at the Father Hudson's home in Coleshill, Warwickshire, between 1957 and 1965.

After the verdict, one jury member left the court in tears as it was revealed that Taylor had been previously been fined by magistrates for abusing four boys at his vicarage in Worcestershire in 1975

Taylor, of Aston-by-Stone, Staffordshire, was jailed for seven years on the two counts of buggery and five years, to run concurrently, on the charges of indecent assault.

Now in their forties and fifties, the 16 victims who helped secure a conviction are only the tip of the iceberg, it is believed.

At least two orphans who were at the home during Taylor's reign committed suicide, according to Warwickshire police who have also revealed that 10 more former residents had come forward since the beginning of the trial.

Victims told how Taylor was "like a Pied Piper" who was revered at the orphanage, by nuns who admired his status as a former prisoner of war, and by young boys whom he would reward with cigarettes, money and sweets.

Taylor, who spent four years in a war camp in Austria after being captured while serving with the Royal Navy during the Second World War, arrived at the home in 1957 after being ordained three years earlier.

He would prey on young boys as they slept in their dormitories, the court heard.

Nuns at the orphanage would beat those who complained with belts, canes, wet rags and straps, it emerged, and people who complained about Taylor's activities would be forced to do chores.

Taylor, who denied all the charges, was found not guilty of two further charges of buggery and one charge of indecent assault.

The Roman Catholic Church last night apologised to the priests' victims. A joint statement issued by the Father Hudson Society and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham, read: "We deeply regret the effect of Father Taylor's actions and will offer counselling and ongoing support as appropriate to those concerned."

The Father Hudson Society has not operated residential homes since 1984 but runs a range of services including adoption, fostering, residential and day care for older people and those with disabilities.

Judge Coates told Taylor: "The boys came from all walks of life. You are a disgrace to your cloth and the church you proclaim. Your victims were not only young but they were helpless, you were the nearest thing they had to a father figure."

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SUNDAY MERCURY

Police close investigation into child abuse at Warwickshire home

May 10 2009 by Adam Aspinall, Sunday Mercury

12next

POLICE have closed their investigation into abuse at a notorious Midland orphanage.

Scores of men and women have claimed they suffered attacks while at Father Hudson’s Home in Coleshill, Warwickshire, from the 1940s to the 1980s.

Last year, the Sunday Mercury revealed a catalogue of shocking new allegations from 11 people of sexual and physical abuse by priests and nuns at Father Hudson’s.

We passed the details on to Warwickshire Police, and MP Mike O’Brien, whose north Warwickshire constituency contains the care home which shut in 1988, backed demands for police to investigate.

But last night a spokesman for Warwickshire Police said: “We are no longer investigating the allegations into Father Hudson’s Home. The investigation has been closed.”

Only one priest has ever been convicted of abusing children at the home. Eric Taylor was found guilty of sexually abusing boys and girls from 1957 to 1965.

He was arrested when his terrified victims came forward in the 1990s. He was sentenced to seven years in prison in 1998 but died in jail, at the age of 80, in 2001.

Now, though, Midland legal experts say there is fresh hope for the victims to achieve justice through the civil courts following a landmark High Court ruling last week.

Judges permitted a former Birmingham solicitor to pursue his claim for £5 million damages against the Roman Catholic Church for abuse he says he suffered as a child in Preston, Lancashire.Patrick Raggett, 50, said he was abused by Jesuit priest Father Michael Spencer at Preston Catholic College, which closed in 1978, and that this had ruined his career.

It is by far the biggest claim of its kind in Britain, and comes despite the fact that 35 years have passed since the abuse ended – and nine years since the priest died.

The college governors argued that the case should not proceed because it was outside the legal time limit.

But Mrs Justice Swift, ruled that the case could go ahead to a full trial, leading legal experts in Britain to speculate that the Roman Catholic Church in the UK could now face a slew of US-style compensation claims over child abuse.

“But it does demonstrate that the courts are willing to see justice done and in exceptional circumstances will allow very old cases to go ahead where they can still be dealt with fairly to all concerned.”

The new allegations of abuse at Father Hudson’s home included a 67-year-old man who broke his 50-year silence to claim he was raped by a priest.

Another woman told how she believed her brother drank himself to death because of his painful memories of abuse. Rose Connolly, 53, welcomed Mr Raggett’s success. She said: “This is fantastic news for Mr Raggett and hopefully it means we may now be able to find justice for the years of abuse we suffered in the home.”

FORMER childhood victims of paedophile Catholic priests are demanding a meeting with the Pontiff in Birmingham next weekend.

Pope Benedict XVI flies into the country on Thursday for the first papal visit since 1982 and will host a live Mass in Cofton Park on Sunday.

It has been reported he will meet victims of clerical sex abuse in secret during the four-day tour, in an attempt to defuse the long-running scandal.

Amazingly, Catholic Church officials had apparently struggled to find victims willing to meet the Pope in ­private.

Rose Connolly, 54, suffered abuse at Father Hudson’s Home in Coleshill, Warwickshire, in the late 1950s and said she would be happy to attend any attempt at conciliation.

“For years all people like me have wanted is an explanation of why we were abused and why were treated so badly,’’ she said.

“I know I wouldn’t be alone in saying that victims of abuse at places like Father Hudson’s Home would love the chance to meet the Pope and discuss it with him.

“Although, the truth is, I don’t think many would be able to hold back their feelings.”

Another victim, who did not want to be named, added: “I think this is just a PR exercise to make the Vatican look better.

“They don’t care about sex abuse now and never have done in the past, otherwise they might have done something about it when the hundredth report of sex abuse was quietly swept under the carpet.”

Scores of men and women have claimed they suffered attacks while at the Father Hudson’s Home from the 1940s to the 1980s.

In 2009 the Sunday Mercury revealed a catalogue of shocking new allegations from 11 people about sexual and physical abuse by priests and nuns. Yet only one priest has ever been convicted of abusing children at the home.

Eric Taylor was found guilty of attacking boys and girls from 1957 to 1965. He was arrested when terrified victims came forward in the 1990s and was sentenced to seven years jail but died in prison in 2000, aged 80.

The Pope has met abuse victims on past overseas trips, but public anger has been stoked in recent months by a series of new revelations of clerical abuse in Ireland and his native Germany. In June, the Pontiff begged for forgiveness from God and victims in a sermon to priests in Rome.

Some campaign groups have said they will attempt a citizen’s arrest of the Pope over the church’s alleged cover-up of abuse, with several human rights lawyers arguing that he should face a trial.

Meanwhile, Irish Catholics appear set to snub Pope Benedict’s visit to Britain with fewer than 1,000 expected to make the pilgrimage across the water. Some 88 per cent of the island’s population is Catholic, but the Pope is not visiting the country.

Up to 65,000 people are expected to attend the Mass in Cofton Park, which will also see the Beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman.

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FROM FATHER HUDSONS SOCIETY WEBSITE:

Father Hudson’s Society is the Social Care Agency of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham, covering the counties of Staffordshire, Worcestershire, West Midlands, Warwickshire and Oxfordshire. It’s main offices are in Coleshill, North Warwickshire, but it has projects and offices throughout the diocese. The Society is a registered Charity ( number 512992) and a Company limited by Guarantee (Reg No. 1653388). It is managed by a Board of Trustees (directors), who meet regularly and bring their many and varied talents to bear on the strategic decision making of the Society.

Mission Statement: Father Hudson’s Society, developing as the social care agency of the Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham, offers services to people in need, in order to improve their quality of life. Christ’s command to “love one another as I have loved you” underpins our work with children, young people, adults and families, without favour or discrimination.

The Trustees count amongst their number both retired and working Senior Social Work managers, practicing solicitor, retired finance director, retired bank manager, marketing consultant, Catholic priests, youth and education workers . The President of the Society is Archbishop Bernard Longley. The Society is an organisation member of Caritas Social Action Network The day to day management of the Society is carried out by the Chief Executive and the Senior Management team, who between them hold academic and professional qualifications in Management, Social Work, Human Resources, Accountancy, and Health and Safety.

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RIGHT, I HAVE A BONE TO GNAW ON ABOUT THIS.

I was attending St Mary's PROTESTANT church in Market Drayton every Sunday, and I told the priest in charge there that I was a survivor of the Staffordshire Pindown child abuse. Now at the time I had no idea that the Catholic Church had any involvement in childcare in Staffordshire, neither did I realise at that time that the clergyman in charge of St Mary's, Rev Michael Hayes was a Jesuit trained at Maynooth.

Hayes was not interested in the abuse I had suffered and offered me zero siupport. Not only that, the wicked man also tried to prevent me from recieving prayer support after the service every week in the little ministry room at the front of the church. Michael Hayes scowled at me and it was very clear that he thought I was a pest. All I wanted was support, prayerful support, which is what the Church members are supposed to offer each other, according to Jesus Christ. I went into that little room every week for prayer, if noone else was in there I just prayed silently by myself, while everyone else was having tea and chatting. I was not making a pest of myself at all. Other people came up to me and wanted to join me in my prayers, and I was so glad of their prayers, I asked the Lord to help the Pindown abuse victims, the secret family court victims and persecuted whistleblowers such as Stuart Syvret. But Michael Hayes tried to stop me doing that. How can a vicar try to stop people asking God to help victims of child abuse and persecution? But thats what he did. When he left the church to go to Yeovil I discovered he was a Jesuit, and I was very angry and wrote to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, also my local bishop of Lichfield and Liverpool as well, none of them replied to my letters.

How disgusted I am that this organisation is still involved in adoption and fostering! How on earth can this be right, with their dreadful track record?

I am trying to help myself. Regular readers of this blog will have witnessed some of the abuse I have been subjected to.

I have been regularly called a "nutter" and told that I need to be in a psychiatric hospital. I have been bullied and threatened, and have kept some of the nasty comments I have been sent off this blog. I have only let a few on because I wanted other people to witness the bullying. So, you see, I am not such a "nutter" after all!

Anyway, it is hard to cope with depression, when it tries to stranglehold your life. The way I am coping is

1) Prayer, I talk to God about my troubles. This is one of the reasons I am called a nutter, because these days it is considered old fashioned to talk to God, although not that very long ago lots of people talked to their creator. Anyway, thats what I do, and I don't see why I should have to put up with being called a nutter for doing so. I know its the Christian way to be long suffering, but I reckon I have suffered enough now, so if anyone leaves any vile comments about my mental health status because I choose to talk to God I will be taking them to court for harassment. I think it's about time I put an end to this nonsense for once and all.

2) Knitting, sewing and crotchet, I love making things. Yesterday I made a bag for a keyboard, I made it out of an old pair of trousers and some materiel I had left over from something else. I will be posting pictures of that at some point, in case anyone else wants to make one.

3) Origami I have rediscovered this beautiful art form. I have got Robert Harbins Origami books 1 and 2 and have been going through the different folds. Its a very relaxing and cheap hobby. Those unwanted junk mailings can be put to good use.

4) Dancing I love ballet, and have started doing my old ballet exercises to some music while I cook dinner. I might start to go to dance class again if I can find one near where I live.

5) Singing and playing music. It's a lovely thing to do, even if you arent very good. Anyone can play something, even if its only rattling a tambourine. Its a great stress reliever.

6) Painting. I like watercolour painting best, because they dry quickly and I like the effects you can get from wet in wet technique. I like painting landscapes best. Painting makes you really look at things.

Early next month, a strongroom in the basement of the British Library in Euston Road will be unlocked by a curator.

He will disturb, for the first time in 25 years, the typewritten sheets that are the unfinished memoirs of Anthony Blunt, the Soviet spy who worked for the Queen. At last the questions over what the manuscript contains - and who it exposes - will be over.

Blunt, a crashing snob and rampant homosexual, was the 'fourth man' in the infamous Cambridge spy ring which included Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Kim Philby. Friends of Blunt have played down the significance of the 30,000-word document written after the patrician art historian, who advised the Queen on her collection for two decades, was publicly exposed as a traitor by Margaret Thatcher in 1979. He died four years later from a heart attack. One of the handful of people who have seen the manuscript is artist and fellow art historian John Golding, Blunt's friend and executor. He has said that he is 'not aware of any great revelations'. So why did he ask the British Library to lock it away for a quarter of a century? Golding's explanation: 'I did so because, although most of the figures mentioned were dead, their families might not like it. It covers his Cambridge days and there are a number of names. They weren't all spies, but Communism was common among intellectuals in the Thirties.'

Are there new or unexpected names? 'I'm not sure,' says Golding. 'It's 25 years since I read it, and my memory is not that good.' One name that could well appear in Blunt's description of his early life is that of his cousin, a certain Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon - later, of course, to become the Queen Mother. Blunt's mother Hilda was a 2nd cousin of the Earl of Strathmore, Elizabeth's father. The young Anthony and his two brothers Christopher and Wilfrid occasionally used to have tea with Elizabeth at the family's London home in Bruton Street, Mayfair - the house from which she was driven to Westminster Abbey in 1923 (when Blunt was 16) to marry the Duke of York, later King George VI.

'I'm sure the Queen Mother was kept out of the loop when MI5 finally got Blunt to privately admit his guilt in 1964,' says a frequent royal houseguest. 'Few apart from the Queen were allowed to know. 'But after he was exposed in 1979, it was different, though no one ever mentioned his name in front of the Queen Mother. While in no way condoning what he'd done, she didn't like to hear him being disparaged.' Blunt's 1964 confession was covered up as part of a deal in which he was granted immunity from prosecution. In return, he was meant to reveal to MI5 all he could about the Soviets. But one old friend of Blunt's circle says he 'still doubts very much whether Anthony would have stooped to telling them everything'.

His Communist sympathies, going back to his Cambridge university days, had long been recognised. He arrived at Trinity College as a brilliant Maths scholar in 1926, a time of depression, hunger marches and political ferment. The Spanish Civil War was looming. Class guilt and genuine concern about the rise of fascism were turning aesthetes such as Blunt into men of action. By 1932, when he was made a fellow of Trinity and the poet Stephen Spender was describing him as 'the most amusing man in Cambridge', he had been recruited by Russia to spot potential spies among his peers. He was lured in by his brilliant, hard-drinking and gay friend Guy Burgess, an Old Etonian who became a double agent working for MI6 while his real masters were the KGB.

Burgess found him easy to manipulate. He had seen in the emotionally stunted Blunt not just a wish to commit himself to anti-fascism, but also an appetite for subversion which, in those days of illegal homosexuality, was keenly whetted. Burgess had himself been recruited by Kim Philby, another British intelligence officer supplying information to the Soviet Union, who defected to Russia in 1963 with the fourth Trinity-educated spy, Donald Maclean. Of the quartet, only Blunt sailed smoothly on. He had joined the British Army from Trinity in 1939. MI5, recruited him the following year. His known Communist sympathies were deemed relatively insignificant compared to the need to defeat Hitler. There is a --difference between being a sympathiser and an agent. Eventually, colleagues did become suspicious. Years later, it emerged that he was passing on important messages from encripted Enigma intercepts to the Soviet Union, but the British authorities could never prove it. He ended the war a Major.

Blunt continued to be watched during the Cold War period. He was appointed director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, turning it, in the words of his friend and former pupil, Brian Sewell, 'from a finishing school for witless girls into a seminary with a worldwide reputation'. As suspicions deepened that he was a Soviet agent, he was interrogated 11 times by MI5, but they never broke him down and could do nothing. Whether King George VI, who made Blunt his keeper of the King's pictures after the war in 1945, was ever told of the security service's suspicions beyond him being a communist sympathiser is unknown. A royal source tells the story of how, in 1948, a young ex-officer, Philip Hay, came to Buckingham Palace to be interviewed for the post of Private Secretary to the widowed Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent, mother of the present Duke. As he walked down a red-carpeted corridor with Sir Alan Lascelles, the King's private secretary, they passed Blunt in silence. When they were out of earshot, Sir Alan whispered to Hay: 'That's our Russian spy.' Indeed he was, but no one had proved it, and to the world at large, he remained a figure of great integrity. The moment of truth in 1964 was April 23 - ironically St.George's Day. Intelligence officer Arthur Martin arrived at Blunt's flat at the top of the Courtauld Institute off London's bustling Oxford Street and told him, that the agency now had unimpeachable evidence of his treachery. The source was an American called Michael Straight who had confessed his own complicity to the FBI. Blunt, knighted by the Queen in 1956, at first denied it. Martin told him he was authorised to grant him immunity from prosecution. Blunt paused briefly, then said: 'It's true.' Endless hours of debriefings followed. Yet, outwardly, for the next 15 years, nothing changed in the exalted life of the angular, arrogant intellectual who had begun life as a mathematician, smoothly switched to languages, and had eventually risen to the pinnacle of establishment life as an art historian. Privately, his domestic life with Scots-born former Irish Guards bandsman John Gaskin, described as so beautiful he turned men's heads as well as womens', continued. Gaskin had moved into Blunt's flat at the Courtauld Institute in the Fifties. The Queen, fully briefed about Blunt's confession, played her part perfectly and Sir Anthony Blunt continued to be a familiar and welcome figure in the royal palaces, as official adviser on her art collection, just as he had been to her father. Nor did his confession affect his presence at the highest tables. In 1966, two years after that clipped admission, Lord Annan, provost of King's College, Cambridge, held a small dinner party at his home. Round the table were Labour's Home Secretary Roy (later Lord) Jenkins, father-figure of the permissive society, Ann Fleming, widow of James Bond author Ian, and Victor (Lord) Rothschild and his wife Tess. With the Provost's permission, the Rothschilds had also brought their friend and house-guest - Blunt. Incredibly, while it might have made no difference to his being there, the Home Secretary had been left in complete ignorance by MI5 that the surveyor of the Queen's pictures had spent years as a Soviet spy. Governments - Labour and Conservative - came and went. Blunt's reputation continued to grow. Then, one November afternoon in 1979, when Margaret Thatcher had been in power a few months, she was asked in the House of Commons if rumours that Sir Anthony Blunt was a Soviet agent were true. Yes, she said. For some in MI5 who believed Anthony Frederick Blunt should have been rotting in jail for his high treason, it was a moment of triumph. For 15 years, they had been forced to bottle up their anger at what they saw as 'special treatment' for this well-connected establishment figure whose lofty life continued uninterrupted while more lowly Russian spies like John Vassell, a clerk at the British embassy in Moscow, were sent to prison for 18 years. Some even dared wonder whether the cover-up could have been influenced by his being related to the Queen Mother and, through her, the Queen herself. Mrs Thatcher has never explained why she ended Blunt's cosy arrangement with MI5. But Sir Bernard Ingham, her private secretary while she was at No 10, has little doubt. 'I believe she did it because she didn't see why the system should cover things up,' he says. 'This was early in her Prime Ministership. I think she wanted to tell the civil service that the politicians decide policy, not the system. She wanted them to know who was boss.' SUDDEN exposure shocked Blunt but, outwardly, failed to shake him. 'He was so businesslike about it,' says his friend art expert Brian Sewell. 'He considered what the implications were about his knighthood and academic honours and what should be resigned and what retained. It was so typically Anthony. 'What he didn't want was a great debate at his clubs, the Athenaeum and the Travellers. 'So the resignation of the knighthood was quickly in the post and then he resigned from the clubs and a number of academic honours. He was incredibly calm about it all.' One afternoon, however, when Blunt slipped into a cinema in Notting Hill, he was recognised and booed until he had to leave. The effect of such opprobrium after decades of admiration was greatest on his domestic partner John Gaskin. Just a few months after Thatcher's bombshell, he threw himself from the 6th-floor balcony of their apartment in Bayswater. His fall was broken by railings and, incredibly, he survived. But Blunt was now a withdrawn figure, seldom going out. It was Tess Rothschild who suggested he fill his time by setting down his memoirs, so he began to write. According to Sewell, he never finished it because he was having to travel to the newspaper library in Collindale, North London, to check facts and 'he began to have difficulty using it, as he was being recognised and it was becoming intolerable'. Others suggest that Blunt stopped writing when he reached the point at which he would have to expose names not already known. 'I do know he was really worried about upsetting his family,' admits Sewell. 'I think he was being absolutely straight with me when he said that if he could not verify the facts there was no point in going on.' Blunt stopped writing some months before his death in 1983 leaving his estate - including the memoir - to Gaskin. He kept it for a year and then, in a state of near nervous-breakdown, called John Golding to take it away. Golding decided to lodge it at the British Museum for 25 years, which ends this July. Four years later, having returned to his native Dundee in Scotland, Gaskin was killed by a train on an open-level crossing. Friends assumed he had killed himself. 'Those who were dealing with the memoir thought they were doing Anthony some kind of service by putting off its exposure for 25 years,' says Sewell. 'How absurd. Instead of dampening down the flames, it's all we've talked about for 25 years. I can't wait for it to be opened.'